The Scum Have Surfaced

[Bruno Broughton]

Bill Eborn:

Bruno

I have always thought one of our strongest cases is what the 'opportunity cost' to the environment of anglers not fishing would be. Do you know of any research of this type and if there is none is there any chance of anybody doing some?

Bill

I am not aware of precisely this type of research, but the EA did some work on the value of fisheries a couple of years ago. The research digest - "Economic Evaluation of Inland Fisheries" (R&D Technical summary W2-039/TS) -looked at various means of valuing the same, including consumer surplus, option, bequest & existence values. The headline figure was that inland fisheries in England & Wales were worth £3,032 million - or £3.032 billion in UK terms.

 

Regarding our sabbing sickos, there are two issues here which greatly disturb me. I know (but don't ask me how I know) that the two who turned up at Passie Ponds took pictures of the cars there, and the children fishing, yet the camera the police got from one of them had no film in it. However, if you have seen the website, some of the shots are there. One way or another, they came home with the film or the images.

 

So... first questions: why did they take photos of parents' cars and what are they now doing with the car registration number information they have?

 

Secondly (and worse): why film children at all, and what are they now doing with those images?

 

"We're just normal people who care about animals" is how one of the supporters described the group members. Yeh, sure - Jackanory. To be honest, they turn my stomach. :mad:

 

[ 10. August 2003, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: Bruno Broughton ]

[Nugg]

That kinda worries me too. Having seen the two photos they published. I wonder if there is a copy right issue here, after all they are not Super Stars.

[Jim Roper]

Does the name Nathen Brown, mean anything to anybody?

[Tony 1]

Jim,are you on about Hunt Saboteurs Association spokesperson Nathan Brown.

 

Regards Tony.

 

[ 11. August 2003, 10:39 AM: Message edited by: Tony C ]

[Peter Sharpe]

I always thought people who hung around at events for young children and took photos of them, were usually arrested as paedophiles.

[Bill Eborn]

I thought you might be interested to read this discussion I have been having on the Keep on Fighting forum. I'm starting to get bored now though and besides its getting cooler and I have got river carp to stalk.

 

Why are you shooting in the wrong direction?

Authored by: Angler on Sunday, August 10 2003 @ 07:17 PM BST

I am an angler and proud of it. I do it because I love it and have done since I was a child but also and importantly because I am resolutely convinced that our fish populations benefit from having a group of people present at the waterside who have an in-depth understanding of fish, their behaviour and their habitat. It is this knowledge that helps us to protect them.

 

As anglers we gain a unique insight into the impact of habitat loss, abstraction and pollution and are able to map these changes. If you and your supporters have the welfare of fish at heart you should allow us to get on with it unmolested. Because if you were to succeed in turning people off fishing that main losers would be fish.

 

Authored by: Toad on Sunday, August 10 2003 @ 09:11 PM BST

Just because you have done something from a young age doesnt make it right. I used to be a regular fisherman but then i saw how fishing was affecting wildlife and the horror it was causing the fish.

Yes, i agree with you that it is beneficial to have people monitoring lakes, looking for pollution, habitat decline and oxygen depletion within a lake which as we all know can be a killer within hours, but does it necessarily take an angler to do so?

 

What we want is for youngsters to be introduced into the environment, be taught how it works, what lives within it and how we can use it without damaging it or those species living within it.

As we have said, it is not only fish that suffer from this 'sport', but also many other species of wildlife that frequent the lakes, ponds, streams and seas.

I have witnessed many birds caught up in line and others which have ingested hooks.

This isnt a nice sight. I once came across a cygnet that had been caught in fighing line and drowned, totally unnoticed by other anglers on the lake. This bird had suffered a slow and lingering death. This isnt a one off but happens through out the country. As we have stated, even the most conscientious fisherman will lose line at some point and this being non bio-degradable will pose a hazard for many years to come.

Come on, lets not introduce children to this past time. Lets take them into the countryside and teach them how to live with nature, not work against it.

[ Reply to This | Parent ]

 

 

Authored by: Angler on Sunday, August 10 2003 @ 10:14 PM BST

If you are so concerned about discarded line harming wildlife why disrupt an event at which children learn good angling practice. A while back there was some research done for the environment agency which showed that the vast majority of angling related litter is the type of stuff which is used by beginners and younger anglers. If you go to the type of waters that they frequent you will find it. Go to the more challenging waters fished by more experienced anglers you will find nothing.

 

There is however a large amount of litter I find (and dispose of incidently as I am required to by my club memberships), the origins of which have nothing whatsoever to do with anglers. However, the identification of those waters as fisheries gives them an identity which perhaps affords them more respect than they would otherwise receive.

 

The impact of habitat loss and low level pollution is gradual. Organisations like the Environment Agency do not have the resources to track these changes on all of our waters and besides is the effect of electro-fishing any less invasive than the use of barbless hooks, unhooking mats, modern net materials and experienced fish handlilng techniques.

 

If you are fishing a site where there is chemical pollution there is sadly usually not that can be done about it. There is a river near to where I live that suffered some chemical pollution a couple of years ago. The food chain was wiped out and whilst some fish have started to return, you will be hard pressed to find the Kingfishers and Herons you find upstream, where were the animal rights movement when this happened? Obviously not there unlike the anglers and subsequently strangely silent on the subject.

 

Pollution that comes from farm byproducts such as slurry on the other hand can be counteracted if the aeration equipment can be brought in quickly enough. Its vital however that people are there to spot it when it happens - this is generally us. More casual observers won't see it - they don't have the skills you learn for a start, to know when fish are in distress.

 

Angling is a benign environmentally beneficial activity that is not about tormenting fish but about learning about them and respecting them.

 

Authored by: Angler on Sunday, August 10 2003 @ 10:24 PM BST

Toad

I should also have said, the reaction of fish you saw when you used to fish, was an instinctive flight reaction not terror. You will have induced a few of those throwing stones in the water! Fish do not have the psychological capability to experience trauma of that type. Theres' is a different, more sensory type of intelligence and something to wonder at. To think anything else is pure anthropromorphism which is no basis for a rational discussion.

 

Authored by: Toad on Sunday, August 10 2003 @ 10:30 PM BST

We opposed this event as it was introducing children to fishing. Over 100 children attended and according to the fishery owner, none of these had fished before. If it wasnt for this event and people being invited fishing then the vast majority of them would never actually take up the sport. Im not trying to ban fishing, only trying to stop a new generation of anglers. Let the 'sport' die out with the current generations.

Without the young generation there wouldnt be such a problem with the litter that you describe.

 

You are right in saying that the majority of discarded line etc is from those lakes frequented by the younger generations but can still be found, in numbers on fisheries predominantly used by more experienced anglers.

We are not just a reactive group, we are proactive. As the site develops we hope to be able to provide evidence and educational tools to help in the clean up of our environment.

 

I would agree that fishing has improved in recent years with new club rules and different methods introduced.

Even with all of these, fishing still poses an unnecessary risk to wildlife.

 

Where were the animal rights movement when the chemical spill happened? Surely this is for the Environment Agency and related bodies to investigate and not those in animal rights?

 

Lastly how can placing a hook through a fishes mouth, playing with it, damaging its dermis and epi-dermis, taking it out of the water for weighing, measurements, photographs etc actually be respecting a fish?

 

Authored by: Angler on Monday, August 11 2003 @ 04:58 PM BST

Chemical spills not the concern of animal rights? If you are dead as a result of a pollution incident, what other right matters?

 

If you feel you want to educate children against angling then that is your perogative in a democratic society. What you do not have the right to do is to frighten or intimidate them. Throwing stones is intimidation.

 

Authored by: Chris on Monday, August 11 2003 @ 06:08 PM BST

Chemical spills not the concern of animal rights? If you are dead as a result of a pollution incident, what other right matters?

 

Yes, they are the concern of animal rights groups, BUT the Environment Agency is a government body that is supposed to cover things like that. I'm not saying we aren't interested in things like that, of course we are!

 

If you feel you want to educate children against angling then that is your perogative in a democratic society. What you do not have the right to do is to frighten or intimidate them. Throwing stones is intimidation.

 

Threatening us with violence is also not the right of the gentleman who did so. How can we educate children against angling, when the Environment Agency and local council decide to educate them for angling??? And especially when we get angling supporters coming on here and calling us terrorists??? The government agency backed this event. How easy do you think it is to educate children against a blood sport when the government is backing its introduction to children???

 

Authored by: Angler on Thursday, August 14 2003 @ 08:32 AM BST

Chris

1. I can imagine how frustrating it must be for you that so many informed bodies support angling, but maybe thats the problem with 'shooting in the wrong direction' or to put it another way - applying a doctrinal and rather formulaic mode of thinking to a complex issue. Move beyond sensationalist rhetoric and the animal rights case against angling falls away very quickly.

 

Mine and most responsible thinking anglers case as I said in an earlier post, is that responsible angling benefits fish, the environments they live in and the other creatures which share that environment with them. Angling clubs and other organisations play a central role in managing those environments. The Environment Agency call us there 'eyes and ears at the waterside', perhaps that is one of the reasons the government support us - where in a world of competing resource priorities would they find the £X billion they would need to replace the combination of three to four million sets of informed eyes and ears.

 

No doubt if you were successful in your objective of educating children against angling you might find sme cause for celebration, but what sort of pyrrhic victory would it be if on your return you looked down from a bridge and saw some water that was neglected, abstracted, abused, overgrown and littered with dead and dying fish?

 

There are some excellent examples of where angling and environmental groups have joined forces to improve aquatic environments. This is generally very unglamorous and hard work. It is doing things like raising money, going on working parties and getting into the water and re-building spawning beds or providing refugees to promote fry retention during our all too frequent floods, researching and providing evidence to planning committees and so on. If you REALLY cared about fish you would be encouraging this and joining in.

 

2. With regard to the terrorism issue, all that person did was to provide a definition of terrorism and point out how your actions fitted it. I fail to see how you can quibble about that.

 

3. If you do something that a parent might perceive as being threatening to their child - like throwing stones at them for example - they are going to react and they may even do it violently, it is very understandable. To represent that as threatening behaviour and an example of angler's violent natures is - in a word - cheap.

[Beebs]

Bill, I just went to read the thread and I can't find it, maybe it's been deleted?? So much for their griping about freedom of speech. It seems that they can't handle reasonable arguments.

 

I've been following this as it has worried me that these fanatics are targetting children. There is no reasoning with them as they refuse to accept any viewpoint apart from their own. I was worried, but now it's just obvious that they haven't got the brains they were born with. Apparently they are students from Brighton University. Obviously need something to do now the Summer holidays are here.

 

No matter what evidence you put before them they will not listen. They're not interested in animal welfare, only in trying to ban angling. It's all very well saying that people should go out into the country and spend hours by the water, but to do what???? Unless you're a buddhist meditating for hours on end, you'd soon get bored and go home if you haven't got something to do.

 

And as far as fish feeling distress and fear that's just completely untrue. Case in point, I have 2 ponds in my garden, one is 4.5 foot deep, the other 1.5 foot deep. I have been losing fish from the samll pond to a heron, so I decided to move the fish from there in to the big pond. Problem is it's very silty on the bottom and when you start netting it, a couple of tries and you can't see a thing. So I tied a length of mono to the top section of my carp rod, a tiny canal waggler and a 16 hook. Bit of bread as bait and fished them out. Caught about 20 fish out of there in total and put them into the big pond. 1/2 an hour later, went to feed them and lo and behold, the fish that had been caught less than an hour ago were up and feeding from the top quite happily. I was convinced before, but I definitely am now.

[rich]

quote:

---

And as far as fish feeling distress and fear that's just completely untrue. Case in point, I have 2 ponds in my garden, one is 4.5 foot deep, the other 1.5 foot deep. I have been losing fish from the samll pond to a heron, so I decided to move the fish from there in to the big pond. Problem is it's very silty on the bottom and when you start netting it, a couple of tries and you can't see a thing. So I tied a length of mono to the top section of my carp rod, a tiny canal waggler and a 16 hook. Bit of bread as bait and fished them out. Caught about 20 fish out of there in total and put them into the big pond. 1/2 an hour later, went to feed them and lo and behold, the fish that had been caught less than an hour ago were up and feeding from the top quite happily. I was convinced before, but I definitely am now.

---

now thats just being lazy. Ive heard of fishing in your own back yard but thats just rediculous

 

cheers,

 

rich

[Beebs]

Come on Rich, you're only jealous 'cos I didn't save you a peg!!! By the way - koi carp, even of about 6 inches long can go like steam trains!!

[Bill Eborn]

Still there Steve although no response yet. If you just click on their home page and scroll down you should find it. Brighton Uni! That doesn't surprise me bearing in mind I live in the place. More thought later, I've just nipped back home for a bacon sarnie (made from real pig!) and I have to get back to work.

 

Cheers

 

Bill